Has US shot down another spy balloon?

JOE Biden last night had fighter jets shoot down a ‘high-altitude’ object over the coast of Alaska.

White House officials said the unidentified craft was the size of a small car and travelling at 40,000ft – making it much smaller and lower in altitude than the Chinese spy balloon shot down last week.

Officials were careful not to describe the object as a balloon and said they were unsure whether it was state or privately owned. President Biden gave the order to the military to shoot it down after Pentagon officials tracked it for 24 hours and decided that it posed ‘a reasonable threat’ to civilian planes.

‘We do expect to be able to recover the debris, since it fell not only within our territorial space but on what we believe is frozen water, so a recovery effort will be made,’ said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

‘We do not know who owns it, whether state owned or corporate owned. We don’t understand the full purpose.’

He added that the Chinese government had not been contacted over the incident.

US Air Force pilots confirmed the object was unmanned before shooting it down.

Last week the US shot down the suspected Chinese spy balloon off the North Carolina coast after it traversed sensitive military sites in Montana. Beijing insisted the flyover was an accident involving a civilian craft and criticised Mr Biden for ‘an obvious overreaction and a serious violation of international practice’.

But Washington said it was capable of collecting communications signals and was part of a vast aerial surveillance programme. An analysis by the US military found that it had numerous antennas.